moonslav59

soxprospects.com has Kelly as a starting pitcher in AAA next season, Wright in the pen and Abad & Hembree on the 25 man roster.

How about this? Trade: Owens, Abad, Hembree & Elias to the A's For: Sean Doolittle: ($2.1M luxury tax cost until 2019)--17:$2.6M, 18:$4.35M, 19:$6M club option ($0.5M buyout), 20:$6.5M club option ($0.5M buyout) Ryan Dull: 5 years of team control (2 pre-arb) I'm probably dreaming again. We might be lucky to get one of these guys for this package.

I have watched pretty much every pitch of every Sox game for over 20 years, but no one person watches every pitch of every MLB game.

My favorite Sox player names: Dick Pole Bob Veale Rip Repulski Wade Boggs Chick Fewster Jarrod Saltalamacchia Stuffy McInnis Bunny Madden

We could also sign a 4th OF'er rather than trade for one, but I doubt we spend much. With 3 young OF'ers, I suppose we could try to go with Holt and Swihart as back-ups. With Moreland up for free agency as well, maybe we'll sign another 1B/LF (DH) type player for a one year deal.

Only Abad & Hembee are out of options, so everyone else can remain as AAA depth. ERod, Wright $ Pom are all better in our pen than our bottom 2-3 guys.

Plus who among us watches every single mlb game?

So we can keep Abad? I'd rather have Wright or Pom in the pen than have Abad remain on the roster. Our pen would be much stronger.

That's one reason resetting the tax was important. We can afford to go over by almost $20M next year.

Welcome Bean! I look forward to your insightful contributions here.

.. I agree, but I could see us trading Leon or Vaz as easily as Swihart.

I'll take the 3 errors and league leading 13 assists as a "bad year" any year. He was more inaccurate than ever, and my argument was in the context of the idea that Betts could be a better defensive CF'er than JBJ- something I am not willing to agree with at this point.

Our pen is too weak to talk about sending someone like ERod down to AAA.

Yes, and not only can we reset the luxury tax for next year's prime class of FAs, we have a lot of room to add someone mid season, if needed.

It's all cool. Yes, I think DD & John are more than happy with out 3 OF'er and our number 4. Once it gets past them, the defense & offense drops off quite a bit.

Who said he was a good defensive OF'er? Certainly, not me.

Agreed. I'm not sure I feel a whole lot better about ERod as I did last year at this time. (I liked him a lot last winter.) I do think we might have been overly high on Kelly based on his last 8 starts from 2015, but I do think feeling better about Pom & Sale than we did about Buch & Kelly is justified. Feeling better about 2017 Wright than we did before 2016 is also justified.

I still have not heard the specifics on revenue sharing and how teams can lose it by spending too much. Anyone have the scoop there?

Yes, and next year's FA class is loaded with helpful players. We'll know a lot more about our true needs then. Some unknowns need to be answered in 2017 before we sign big money players to 3 year contracts.

d) he will platoon as HanRam plays 1B vs LHPs and Young DHs. He is better vs RHPs than Young.

I'm not so sure. An injury to HanRam or Moreland would force us to use Young vs RHPs? I'd rather have Swihart DH vs RHPs and be available to PH (probably for Vaz or Leon) when he's not starting. Or, he could even start a game here and there at catchers vs a LHPs. It's not ideal for his development, but we don't have much depth when it comes to hitting. Our bench consists of whoever is not starting out of Young-Moreland plus Holt, Rutledge & Vaz.

With a young team like we have, someone is bound to disappoint us, but overall, I think "the rest" should do better. The big "if" will be at 3B, but it doesn't take much to improve on the worst in baseball in 2016. A whole year of Beni, Pom, and hopefully Wright, ERod, Kelly, Young, Leon and others should give us an uptick. Plus, I'm hoping Moreland gives us more than replacement level performance. His 1B defense alone should maybe give back one win we lose from Papi's retirement. I could see us end up with pretty close to the same run total as 2016, but with improved defense and wire-to-wire better SP'ing. Our second half starter numbers were the best in the AL, and that was without Sale and Wright! Not m uch talk has been dedicated to our improved defense, so here's how I see it: C: I'll call it even. Replace 264 innings from Hanigan and 85 from Holaday with Leon & Vaz getting more. (Swihart's 52 innings could be replaced or added to.) 1B: Big improvement. 1145 innings by HanRam , 290 by Shaw & 5 by Papi replaced by maybe 1,000 by Moreland (GG quality) and 440 by Hanram down over 700 innings. 2B: Call it even 3B: Tough call, but I'll say we get worse by a little. We used 9 players at 3B this year, including 4 over 90 innings: Shaw 851, Hill 275, Rutledge 97 and Holt 93. SS: I'm hopeful for a slight bump up here, but Bogey took a step back this year. I'm not happy with Holt as his primary back-up (Hernandez is better), but there's not a big difference there. LF: Big gain here: Beni should be a huge improvement over this: 479 Holt 446 Young 232 Beni 143 Brentz 114 Swihart 13 LaMarre 10 Castillo 3 T Shaw CF & RF should be the same but with Beni as the CF back-up not Holt, maybe a very slight uptick. In summary, big plus at 1B and LF and little minus (maybe) at 3B. Some swing could occur at C and SS.

I've been saying Brentz should be the next to go for the last 3-5 DFA's. Losing Basabe and Castillo from the 40 man roster has greatly limited out OF depth beyond what we have on the 25 man roster. Swihart and Brentz are the only two goes not projected to be on the 25 man roster that can play OF without needing to be added to the 40 man roster. We may not need to go beyond the 25 man roster as we have these guys that can our can pretend to play the OF: Young Holt Moreland HanRam (Yikes!)

If Moreland sucks or HanRam struggles or gets hurt, I still think we may see Swihart at DH. I know that slows his growth as a catcher, but if we need his bat to win, that should trump development protocol.

I like everything you had to say, until the last paragraph. I've never bought into the 6 man rotation idea, and although I like our 4-6 starters, there's no way I want to lessen how many starts our top 3 get. The other reason is this: our pen is not that deep. Going with 6 starters takes away a good arm from the pen...one that can eat a lot of innings from the middle to long relief role.